page_title: Cesare Mori
section_title: Fight against the Mafia
hierarchical_section_title: Cesare Mori / Fight against the Mafia
caption_attribution_description: Italiano: Il prefetto Cesare Mori in camicia nera presso Piana degli Albanesi, comunità albanese di Sicilia di rito bizantino (vedasi papàs alle spalle). == Licensing ==
context_page_description: Cesare Mori was a prefect before and during the Fascist period in Italy. He is known in Italy as the "Iron Prefect" because of his iron-fisted campaigns against the Mafia in Sicily in the second half of the 1920s.
  Mori was regarded as a Fascist, and wrote strongly of his admiration of the effectiveness of both the Fascist Party and Mussolini several times in his self authored accounts in Sicily, although his works were clearly influenced by the propaganda of the regime: "What caused the undoubted efforts made in the past to peter out was a feeling of listlessness, in the minds of the people which seemed refractory even to unusual stimulants. It was not a reality, it was not a fact, but a feeling; yet the past was infected and dominated by it until the day when, on the coming of Fascism, the Duce in person broke the evil spell." Likewise, Cesare Mori is known for being the first to ever destroy the influence of the mafia within Italy. The 1977 film Il prefetto di ferro, directed by Pasquale Squitieri, is about his fight against the Mafia when he was prefect in Sicily.
context_section_description: Mori took up his post in Palermo in November 1925 and remained in office until 1929. Within the first two months he arrested over five hundred men, a number that would only grow in the following years. In January 1926, he undertook what was probably his most famous action, the occupation of the village of Gangi, a stronghold of various criminal gangs. Using carabinieri and police forces he ordered house-to-house searches, picking up bandits, small-time Mafia members and various suspects who were on the run. Due to the necessity of the nature of the mafia, he was forced to discreetly collect large amounts of evidence and subsequently make arrests en masse to avoid large numbers of mafiosi going into hiding. As he poetically states, "These operations were carried out in considerable numbers and on a large scale: and the rapidity with which they succeeded one another and the exactness of evidence on which they were based completely strangled the criminal associations which for so many years had flourished with impunity.  And the whole island chanted a hymn of liberation."  These sweeping mass arrests, earned him the nickname of "Iron Prefect".
  Mori understood the basis of Mafia power. In order to defeat the phenomenon, he felt it necessary to "forge a direct bond between the population and the state, to annul the system of mediation under which citizens could not approach the authorities except through middlemen..., receiving as a favour that which is due them as their right." Mori's methods were sometimes similar to those of the Mafia. He did not just arrest the bandits, but sought to humiliate them as well. If he could display a strong central authority to rival the Mafia, people would see that the Mafia was not their only option for protection. He often found evidence of how the Mafia operated, and seized their property and cattle. 
  Mori's inquiries brought evidence of collusion between the Mafia and influential members of the State apparatus and the Fascist party. His position, however, became more precarious. Some 11,000 arrests are attributed to Mori's rule in Palermo. That led to massive amounts of paperwork in order to prepare for the trials, which may have been partially responsible for his dismissal.
  Mussolini had already nominated Mori as a senator in 1928, and in June 1929 he was relieved of his duties. The Fascist propaganda proudly announced that the Mafia had been defeated.
caption: Mori in black shirt
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